University of Cambridge
Expanded Universes: Reading French Literature of the Long Thirteenth Century with Twentieth and Twenty-First Century American Comics and Fandom Practices
Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis thesis explores the collaborative generation of multi-textual hyperdiegetic universes in the long thirteenth and twentieth centuries through analysis of their formal and affective composition. The thesis is composed of two case-studies in three chapters. The first part reads Arthurian romance alongside comics theory and Marvel comics. Collaborative interests generate serialised content, forming an expanded universe over decades. Chapter 1 pursues a formal analysis of interlace across the Lancelot-Grail, through a close reading of Lancelot’s paintings in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 112, alongside comicbook theorist Scott McCloud’s definition of closures. Chapter 2 explores the changing identity of the hero through a reading of the Chevalier de la Charrette and the Lancelot en prose in relation to Marvel comics and modern Arthuriana. Chapter 3 presents a reading of merveille and translatio in the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort le roi Artu alongside the 2007 Marvel event Civil War. I read these works as reactive events which work to preserve the expanded universe rather than to end it. The second part reads vernacular devotional literature alongside fandom theory and practice. This part shows how affective agents cannibalise and appropriate the material of an expanded universe, through a reading of a sequence of saints’ lives and miracles in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3516. Chapter 4 explores the formal qualities of vernacular hagiography with reference to fanfiction. Chapter 5 reads the lives of Saints Juliane, Katherine and Marguerite alongside hurt/comfort fanfiction. Chapter 6 reads Del Tumbeor Nostre Dame as a self-insert story for a lay population alongside the Mary-Sue topos in fanfiction. This thesis reads literature written for expanded universes as contingent, dynamic, provisional, and collaborative. It demonstrates that love fuels the communal creation and propagation of Arthurian literature, devotional literature, comic books and fanfiction.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Watts, Catherine
- Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Griffin, Miranda
Subjects
dc:subject × 8Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.120873
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/388585